BACKGROUND: Methamphetamine psychosis (MAP) symptomatology has been described as indistinguishable from that of schizophrenia (SZ), yet research comparing these two disorders on specific psychotic symptoms such as schneiderian first-rank symptoms (FRS) is lacking. We aimed to determine and compare the occurrence and associations of FRS in patients diagnosed with MAP and with SZ. SAMPLING AND METHOD: Data from SCID-I interviews performed on patients with either a diagnosis of SZ or MAP were compared...

This final chapter deliberates three overarching topics and conclusions of the research presented in this volume: the endurance of the concept of extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation, the importance of considering subjective costs of activities when aiming to understand and enhance motivation, and current knowledge of the neurobiological underpinnings of motivation. Furthermore, three topics for future motivation research are outlined, namely the assessment and determinants of intrinsic benefits, the reconciliation of activity-specific motivation models with generalized motivation impairments in clinical populations, and the motivational dynamics of groups...

How can an individual be motivated to perform a target exercise or activity? This question arises in training, therapeutic, and education settings alike, yet despite-or even because of-the large range of extant motivation theories, finding a clear answer to this question can be challenging. Here we propose an application-friendly framework of motivation for a specific activity or exercise that incorporates core concepts from several well-regarded psychological and economic theories of motivation. The key assumption of this framework is that motivation for performing a given activity is determined by the expected benefits and the expected costs of (performance of) the activity...

Fatigue is considered to be an important and frequent factor in motivation problems. However, this term lacks clinical and pathophysiological validity. Semantic precision has to be improved. Lack of drive and tiredness with increased sleepiness as observed in fatigue in the context of inflammatory and immunological processes (hypoaroused fatigue) has to be separated from inhibition of drive and tiredness with prolonged sleep onset latency as observed in major depression (hyperaroused fatigue). Subjective experiences as reported by patients, as well as clinical, behavioral, and neurobiological findings support the validity and importance of this distinction...

Motivation in performance is often measured via competitions. Winning a competition has been found to increase the motivation to perform in subsequent competitions. One potential neurobiological mechanism that regulates the motivation to compete involves sex hormones, such as the steroids testosterone and estradiol. A wealth of studies in both nonhuman animals and humans have shown that a rise in testosterone levels before and after winning a competition enhances the motivation to compete. There is strong evidence for acute behavioral effects in response to steroid hormones...

Motivation is a complex neurobiological process that initiates, directs, and maintains goal-oriented behavior. Although distinct components of motivated behavior are difficult to investigate, appetitive and consummatory phases of motivation are experimentally separable. Different neurotransmitter systems, particularly the mesolimbic dopaminergic system, have been associated with food motivation. Over the last two decades, however, research focusing on the role of opioid signaling has been particularly growing in this area...

Testosterone and cortisol have been proposed to influence aggressive behavior by altering the neural processing of facial threat signals. However, this has not been investigated in direct social interactions. Here, we explored the joint impact of testosterone, cortisol, and brain reactivity to anger expressions on women's reactive aggression in the Social Threat Aggression Paradigm (STAP). The STAP is a competitive reaction time task in which the purported opponent displays either an angry or a neutral facial expression at the beginning of each trial and delivers increasingly loud sound blasts to the participants, successfully provoking them...

The aim of this study was to determine the characteristic features which contribute to inappropriate eating attitudes in people suffering from anorexia nervosa, based on an analysis of recent data. Factors influencing these attitudes have a genetic, neurobiological, biochemical, affective-motivational, cognitive, and behavioral background. Another important issue addressed in the paper is a description of the mechanism leading to continuous dietary restrictions. The altered activity of neurotransmitters modulating patients' moods after the consumption of food and a disturbed responsiveness to enterohormones enhance affective-motivational and cognitive aspects which, in turn, impede the improvement of eating behaviors...

Social and sexual behaviors, including that of mate choice, are dependent on social information. Mate choice can be modified by prior and ongoing social factors and experience. The mate choice decisions of one individual can be influenced by either the actual or potential mate choice of another female or male. Such non-independent mate choice, where individuals gain social information and socially learn about and recognizes potential mates by observing the choices of another female or male, has been termed "mate-choice copying"...

BACKGROUND: Adolescence is characterized by major neurobiological changes, and the effects of some psychoactive drugs seem to differ between adolescents and adults. Bupropion, an antidepressant that is also used to treat nicotine addiction, induces behavioral actions in both adolescent and adult rodents. However, the effects of this drug on spatial ability have not been compared in animals at different stages of their development. The present study was conducted to assess the effects of bupropion on spatial learning and memory in adolescent and adult mice...

Compulsive eating behavior is a transdiagnostic construct that is characteristic of medical and psychiatric conditions such as forms of obesity and eating disorders. While feeding research is moving towards a better understanding of the proposed addictive properties of food, the components and the mechanisms contributing to compulsive eating are not yet clearly defined or understood. Current understanding highlights three elements of compulsive behavior as it applies to pathological overeating: 1) habitual overeating; 2) overeating to relieve a negative emotional state; and 3) overeating despite aversive consequences...

Social interactions are essential for animals to reproduce, defend their territory, and raise their young. The conserved nature of social behaviors across animal species suggests that the neural pathways underlying the motivation for, and the execution of, specific social responses are also maintained. Modern tools of neuroscience have offered new opportunities for dissecting the molecular and neural mechanisms controlling specific social responses. We will review here recent insights into the neural circuits underlying a particularly fascinating and important form of social interaction, that of parental care...

Activity in the rodent prelimbic (PL) cortex contributes to consolidation, retrieval and reconsolidation of learned fear. The PL cortex is considered homologous to the primate dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC). In patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the dACC is often reported to be hyperactive after acquisition and/or around the retrieval of the traumatic memory. It is still unknown, however, whether there is a relationship between altered dACC functioning at these time points and PTSD-associated behavioral outcomes, such as fear overgeneralization...

Major depressive disorder (MDD) has been associated with alterations in several functional brain networks. Previous studies investigating brain networks in MDD during the performance of a task have yielded inconsistent results with the function of the brain at rest. In this study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging at rest and during a goal-directed task to investigate dynamics of functional connectivity in 19 unmedicated patients with MDD and 19 healthy controls across both experimental paradigms...

Biomarkers have transformed modern medicine but remain largely elusive in psychiatry, partly because there is a weak correspondence between diagnostic labels and their neurobiological substrates. Like to other neuropsychiatric disorders, depression is not a unitary disease, but rather a heterogeneous syndrome that encompasses varied, co-occurring symptoms and divergent responses to treatment. By using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a large multisite sample (n = 1,188), we show here that patients with depression can be subdivided into four neurophysiological subtypes ('biotypes') defined by distinct patterns of dysfunctional connectivity in limbic and frontostriatal networks...

Chronic pain during childhood and adolescence can lead to persistent pain problems and mental health disorders into adulthood. Posttraumatic stress disorders and depressive and anxiety disorders are mental health conditions that co-occur at high rates in both adolescent and adult samples, and are linked to heightened impairment and disability. Comorbid chronic pain and psychopathology has been explained by the presence of shared neurobiology and mutually maintaining cognitive-affective and behavioral factors that lead to the development and/or maintenance of both conditions...

In this paper we propose a new methodology for introducing thresholds in the analysis of neuro- biological databases. Often, in Neuroscience, absolute thresholds are adopted. This is done by cutting the data below (or above) predetermined values of the involved parameters, without an analysis of the distribution of the collected data concerning the phenomenon under investigation. Despite an absolute threshold could be rigorously defined in terms of physic parameters, it can be influenced by many different subjective aspects, including cognitive processes, and individual adaptation to the external stimuli...

A brief overview of structural and functional brain characteristics related to g is presented in the light of major neurobiological theories of intelligence: Neural Efficiency, P-FIT and Multiple-Demand system. These theories provide a framework to discuss the main objective of the paper: what is the relationship between individual alpha frequency (IAF) and g? Three studies were conducted in order to investigate this relationship: two correlational studies and a third study in which we experimentally induced changes in IAF by means of transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS)...

Phosphodiesterase 10 inhibitors (PDE10-I), are conceptually attractive drugs with a potential great therapeutic window as their enriched striatal localization may likely stimulate D1R and reduce D2R downstream effects. However, so far selective PDE10-I with efficacy in animal models have not shown benefit in clinical trials and unexpectedly revealed a substantial dyskinesia motor side-effect. Areas covered: This paper reviews the underlying biological rationale of PDE10 as a target in schizophrenia, Parkinson's and Huntington's disease based on peer-reviewed published articles, the status of the different PDE10-I in clinical development for various CNS indications and explores possible reasons for the clinical trial failures and translational disconnect...